The Colorado threats and the despicable slander of the DI

Recall those threats made against evolutionary biologists at the University of Colorado at Boulder? You can read the text of some of them at the Panda’s Thumb now. This is clearly the work of a deranged Christian cultist and creationist kook. We at the Panda’s Thumb also know who the author was, since he didn’t conceal his identity in the letters, and have tracked down his website, and yeah, he’s one of those wacky creationists and a fervent convert to Christianity from Judaism (we are not linking to that information until the police or other sources confirm it).

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I’m surrounded!

Isn’t this a lovely map? It shows the concentration of ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed victims of obsolete mythologies in the United States, with the lighter colors being the most enlightened and the dark reds being the most repressed and misinformed. Oh, it’s labeled as the frequency of religious adherents, but it’s the same thing.

i-adf6a6173dd0a43429b5feda3eaed362-rel_adherents.jpg
Religious adherents as a percentage of residents

You can see where I live — it’s in the dark splotch marring the western and southern corner of the state of Minnesota. It says that more than 75% of the people who live here are bible-wallopers — I believe it. On the bright side, I can hope that somewhere around a quarter of the people living here are sensible and unafflicted.

Hey, look — Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia are paler than Minnesota!

The consensus is that this is NOT such a nice map after all. The methodology involved querying a subset of the religious organizations in the country about their membership, which has the dual problem of inflated self-reporting and the omission of religious groups that aren’t part of major national organizations. The general feeling, I think, is that the overall frequency of religious adherents is grossly underreported in major parts of the country.

So it’s not only inaccurate, it hides the magnitude of religious indoctrination.

The Chronicle does it again

They’ve got another article from some fuddy-duddy prof who doesn’t like the 21st century. It seems to be nothing but a long whine about modern teaching technologies — it’s rather pathetic, actually, but the Chronicle seems to have a fondness for running occasional articles from defensive, confused Luddites. Here’s an example:

Besides using the computer more in my classroom, the experts tell me that another way to transform my teaching persona is to put more of my course materials online. I can create a course that’s more user-friendly and appealing to today’s students by incorporating more Web-based elements. That could be as simple as placing my syllabi, lecture notes, and other course materials on my Web site — which would mean that I first have to get a Web site.

I’d say the best way to improve his teaching persona would be to have the snide ignorance extirpated from his brain. That’s not what teaching technology is about, and I’d agree that if you substitute a computer for good pedagogy you lose. But with the right perspective — specifically, that technology is a tool that when used appropriately and with moderation can improve your ability to deliver information and can provide resources to help students get that information — it can help you teach. A fellow who’s stymied at the thought of getting a website probably should not mess with it, though; he’s kind of hopeless. He’s at a university, so he’s probably already got one and doesn’t know it, and the university probably also provides software to simplify putting up simple web pages that, for instance, could archive reading assignments or help him maintain a gradebook.

It’s no sin to not understand modern instructional technology, and lots of teachers can do a great job without it; it is damned stupid to mock teaching technology, though, when you’re ignorant of what it is.

I’ll let New Kid rip up the rest of the article, though. Some days the Chronicle just depresses me — it’s like reading some blue-lettered broadsheet from the 1950s. Hey, maybe they ought to stop publishing it on the web and instead distribute it with a network of hand-cranked presses and stapled mimeo sheets!

Sudden upsurge in godlessness in America!

All the Baptists and Methodists and Mormons and Lutherans and so forth have been unchurched by fiat — the pope has declared their buildings non-churches and that they aren’t true followers of Jesus. This is good news! Now we can tell all the protestants, “Nyaa, nyaa, you’re going to Hell with us atheists!” I’m also going to relish telling the Jehovah’s Witnesses that knock on my door and invite me to church that the only church in town is a couple of blocks down 3rd Avenue, and Father Caskey runs the show.

The bad news, though, is that we’re going to have to resume the Thirty Years’ War. Those Germans will tremble in fear when the Vatican Guard marches northward, swinging those halberds.

A blogginghead in my future

If you’ve been following the Bloggingheads site, you probably already know that the best thing on it is Science Saturday with John Horgan and George Johnson. Horgan and Johnson are splitting up for the next few weeks, and are getting different heads to make a pair. Next week, George Johnson and the physicist Sean Carroll will be teaming up for a physics-heavy session, and the week after that, it’s John Horgan and me, of all people. I’m going to dig up my kids’ old boy scout manuals and review the sections on knots just in case he asks me about string theory.

Sean brings up a few things I’m mildly concerned about. I know from personal experience that being a blogger doesn’t necessarily translate well into more visual media; I’m not sure what to do about that, other than just being awake and avoiding faux pas like showing up at the camera naked. We also need juicy stuff to talk about. Like Sean, I’ll accept suggestions for what you want to hear in the comments—or you could be really wicked and write directly to Horgan with ideas for exciting topics to ambush me with (you could also advise Johnson on how to get a rise out of Carroll).

If you really want to have fun with it, mix up the questions. Carroll might be just as flummoxed getting asked about developmental networks in invertebrate genomes as I would be having to chatter about dark matter.

The Tripoli 6 case may be resolved soon

The six health care workers in Libya who were accused of intentionally infecting children with AIDS have had their death sentence confirmed. According to Revere, this is good news. It means the case now moves to the High Judicial Council, which has the power to commute the sentence, and which is also government controlled … and the government has just accepted (or, more accurately, “extorted”) a deal for lifetime care of the affected kids. We may know as soon as next week that the falsely accused doctor and nurses will have been released to their home countries. We hope.

“Political interference with the work of the surgeon general appears to have reached a new level in this administration”

That quote from Henry Waxman can’t possibly be a surprise, can it?

Our former surgeon general, Richard Carmona, is speaking out against the anti-science policies of the Bush administration.

For example, he said he wasn’t allowed to make a speech at the Special Olympics because it was viewed as benefiting a political opponent. However, he said was asked to speak at events designed to benefit Republican lawmakers.

“The reality is that the nation’s doctor has been marginalized and relegated to a position with no independent budget, and with supervisors who are political appointees with partisan agendas,” said Carmona, who served from 2002 to 2006.

This administration wants to sign on a new surgeon general: James Holsinger, a religious homophobe who has received the endorsement of the Reverend Fred Phelps. Ironically, part of their defense against the accusations of Carmona is that the surgeon general has “the obligation to be the leading voice for the health of all Americans,” although it seems to me that they meant to say the voice for the health of wealthy heterosexual Republicans … but then, that’s a phrase I think you can substitute for “American” any time a right-winger uses the word.

It’s just another datum in the history of the politicization of science and medicine by the repugnant Bush administration.

(via Angry by Choice)

Finding a big dead thing would be the highlight of anyone’s day

Usually, on my morning walk, I keep my eyes open for any squid that might have washed up on the sidewalks of Morris. Now I learn that the squid wash up on the beaches of Tasmania. I suppose a place nearer an ocean is a more likely spot. (By the way, TONMO is the site to check for more news on the beached squid carcass—and they think it is unlikely that it’s actually a giant squid.)

Maybe I should start scanning for dead baby mammoths, instead.